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1. Introduction
I am doing something that truly matters. [A]lthough I don’t quite know what that is.
(Participant 471)
Individuals working on online gig labor platforms are often being referred to – or refer to themselves – as “cogs in a machine,” “anonymous numbers” or “artificial artificial intelligence” (e.g. Salehi et al., 2015). These metaphors suggest a perspective on digital workers as a commodity, as an inanimate resource or as replaceable parts of a larger system. To a certain extent these perceptions may be rooted in the highly granular, modular and decontextualized nature of digitally mediated work packages: workers who are transcribing snippets of text, rating video sequences or filling out surveys are often removed not just from the requester but also from the final product of their work. On the other hand, digital workers might also perceive themselves as empowered “micro-entrepreneurs” who work independently, take charge of their own schedule and who are recognized for their talent and their results – independent of socio-economic or demographic factors.
In this paper, we are interested in the individual perception of whether or not one’s work and person matters as a key to understanding work engagement (WE) in digital labor. More to the point, we are interested in individual perceptions of mattering as a precondition for workers’ ability and willingness to participate in digital work in a sustainable manner and experience a “positive, fulfilling, affective-motivational state of work-related well-being” (Bakker et al., 2008). Here, we assume that individuals who feel that they themselves and their work “count” and “make a difference” will be more engaged and immersed in their digital labor. Instilling a sense of mattering is not just about worker dignity, but – extending the argument put forth by Boons et al. (2015) – it may be a novel explanatory factor for long-term activity and participation in crowdworking platforms.
This contribution follows a four-step approach. We will first offer a brief literature review on the core constructs of digital labor and mattering. Second, based on a longitudinal quantitative survey among 804 (first wave) and 460 (second wave) workers on the crowdworking platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) we will introduce and establish a measurement of mattering as a multi-dimensional construct. In a third step, we...